Determinants of Party Unity in Europe A comparative study of parliamentary parties in twenty-three countries by Gabriela Borz Department of Political Science CENTRAL EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy CEU eTD Collection Supervisors: Zsolt Enyedi (Central European University) Kenneth Janda (Northwestern University) Budapest, Hungary March 2009 CEU eTD Collection © Copyright Gabriela Borz 2009 All Rights Reserved STATEMENT 1 This is to confirm that the thesis contains no materials accepted for any other degrees in any other institutions. STATEMENT 2 This is to confirm that the thesis contains no materials previously written and/or published by another person, except where appropriate acknowledgment is made in the form of bibliographical references. Gabriela Borz, Budapest May 2009 CEU eTD Collection To my mother and father CEU eTD Collection Abstract Empirically , this thesis presents an original cross-country comparison based on raw data about 187 European political parties and their levels of unity, as influenced by party characteristics and national political institutions. I offer various ways to measure party unity of behavior: measures based on elite surveys, the expert survey I have conducted myself, and roll-call data. Firstly , I argue that there is no significant discrepancy between the levels of behavioral unity in Central Eastern Europe and Western Europe. This suggests that the two regions are not significantly different in all aspects of party politics, and further substantiates the need for comparative party research to include Central Eastern Europe. There is however a significant difference in the unity of attitudes between Eastern and Western Europe, and the same difference in terms of unity of attitudes is also significant when old and new democracies are compared. Secondly , the results show the supremacy of party characteristics in explaining unity of behavior. Ideological congruence is a good predictor of how united a party is going to be in parliament. However, unity of attitudes is not a sufficient predictor of party unity of behavior. High centralization and disciplinary rules contribute as well to achieving a high level of behavioral unity. Thirdly , the MPs’ focus of representation does predict their future behavior in the legislature. The more importance MPs allocate to representing their constituents, the lower will be their unity of behavior in the parliament. This tendency accentuates if an MP is elected under open lists. Fourthly , contrary to expectations and against many propositions advanced earlier in the party literature, systemic factors, like federalism, parliamentarism, and electoral system perform poorly in explaining MPs’ voting unity in the legislature. The only systemic factors with a positive direct effect on the unity of behavior are: the amount of state subsidy that a party receives, the ceiling on donations and party system age. Systemic factors impact however, more strongly on the unity of attitudes and therefore indirectly on the unity of behavior. Theoretically , the thesis explains party unity from state and party perspectives and advances a model which works for European political parties. While doing this, the thesis touches upon several theoretical issues in party politics, comparative politics and democratic theory. First of all, I suggest that definitions of political parties which regard them as unitary actors could be revised to consider the distinction between attitudes and behavior. My PhD thesis builds on the differences between unity of behavior and unity of attitudes, a conceptualization which better addresses the complexities inherent in the issue of party unity because unity on one of these dimensions does not always guarantee the same level of unity on the other. Secondly , my thesis shows that even if institutional conditions would not favor unitary party behavior in parliament, parties adapt and use their own tools in order to become a unitary voting bloc. Consequently, whether party government is in danger or not, because of declining partisanship within the electorate or because of the convergence of parties into a mainstream consensus, party unity will always enhance it and maintain it. Thirdly, the findings of this thesis allow me to conclude that some paradoxes of representative democracy still persist. If one assumes that external democracy is achieved, then there are instances in which this happens at the expense of internal party democracy. Some parties apply high levels of central CEU eTD Collection control and disciplinary rules in order to be unitary in the parliament, to vote for the policies proposed and, consequently, to implement them. Fourthly, the process of party formation and development are also related to unity of attitudes and unity of behavior. While unity of attitudes develops rather slowly, the latter can change more rapidly when intra-party mechanisms of coercion are applied. Table of contents Acknowledgments ........................................................................................................... i List of figures ................................................................................................................ iii List of tables .................................................................................................................. iv 1. INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................1 2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ........................................................................8 2.1 Redefining the concept of party unity ..................................................................8 2.2 Representative democracy and party unity ........................................................11 2.3 Determinants of party unity................................................................................14 2.3.1 Systemic determinants of party unity ..........................................................15 2.3.2 Party level explanations for party unity ......................................................22 2.4 Towards an integrated model of party unity ......................................................25 2.5 Deriving hypotheses ..........................................................................................30 3. DATA AND METHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS .............................34 3.1 Concepts, operationalization and measurements ...............................................34 3. 2 Overview of data gathering, data quality and data analysis ..............................48 4. PARTY UNITY IN EUROPEAN NATIONAL PARLIAMENTS. A DIFFERENTIATION BETWEEN EAST AND WEST DEMOCRACIES? ........54 4.1 Behavioral unity: dimensions and indicators .....................................................55 4.2 An East – West differentiation of behavioral party unity in Europe? ................64 4.3 Patterns of achieving party unity in Europe .......................................................75 4.4 Conclusion ..........................................................................................................92 5. PARTY LEVEL EXPLANATIONS FOR PARTY UNITY IN EUROPE.......95 5.1 Party unity of behavior versus unity of attitudes ................................................96 5.2 The theoretical case for party level explanations .............................................102 5.3 Variables and data ............................................................................................105 5.4 Party characteristics and their impact on unity ................................................107 5.5 Accounting for change over the last decade .....................................................123 5.6 Conclusion ........................................................................................................129 6. SYSTEMIC INFLUENCES ON PARTY UNITY............................................131 6.1 The theoretical case for structural explanations ...............................................132 6.2 Variables and data ............................................................................................138 6.3 Assessing the impact of systemic factors on unity ...........................................155 6.4 Conclusion ........................................................................................................166 7. CONCLUSIONS..................................................................................................170 CEU eTD Collection Appendix A Measurements and coding ......................................................................181 Appendix B Party acronyms .......................................................................................190 Appendix C Party unity study 2007 ............................................................................195 Appendix D Statistical tests ........................................................................................205 REFERENCES .........................................................................................................209 Acknowledgments This thesis has finally become reality with the help of some extraordinary people whom I have had the privilege to meet and to be advised by. What I have found along the way is that the prime challenging and rewarding experience is not to actually embark in the PhD endeavor, but to be able to finish it. The project could not have been finalized without the help of two great